


those who wander

by Alyss_Penedo



Series: The Half-assed Plunny Junkyard [6]
Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic, Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, Humor, I'm not sure where this came from, Magi: Labyrinth of Magic Spoilers, TWEWY secret report spoilers, What else is new, beyond my endless sea of salt over the Magi canon ending, josh is a troll
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 09:15:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19850104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alyss_Penedo/pseuds/Alyss_Penedo
Summary: Sinbad lands in a dimension suitable for habitation by bodyless beings made of Rukh--though, he's told, they call it Soul here in Shibuya.Of course,suitable for habitationis a very broad term.





	those who wander

**Author's Note:**

> I know this is still not the next chapter of destiny has written your end, but I tripped headfirst into Magi and that manga ending was incredibly sucky, what the _fuck_ was that _actual shit-_  
>  and then TWEWY snuck in the backdoor of my brain and ignored every DO NOT FEED THE PLUNNIES sign I had posted to do exactly that.
> 
> ***Spoilers for the Secret Reports. This fic won't make much sense if you don't know TWEWY, sorry***

“Boss, got an anomaly for ya.” Hanekoma stands at ease, hands in his pockets and lazy slouch in place. Its' effect is ruined by the serious look on the man’s face.

Joshua hums as he peruses the offered report. “A visitor, is it?”

“Not sure that’s the right word for it.” Hanekoma shrugs. “Doesn’t look like he meant to end up here. From what I can tell of his trajectory, the guy was just bouncing from place to place until he found a world that could accommodate his consciousness.”

Josh tsk’s. “And not all places cater to their dead quite like ours, I suppose.” The Composer languidly turns a page. “Still, for him to have landed in our Shibuya Game? We’re still unstable from that last mess, aren’t we?”

“Probably the reason he ended up here in the first place,” Hanekoma speculates. “There’s a fracture spanning the Frequencies centered on the city. Lets things in more easily. Drifting through realities like that, our wanderer was more likely to end up here than anywhere else in our cluster of UG’s, I’d wager.” The man waves his hand in a lackadaisical motion, dismissing the matter. “What’s important is what to do about him, though. The GM didn’t notice anything and processed him like any other Player. Do we let him stay?”

Joshua falls silent for a long moment, mood balanced between annoyance and intrigue. Hanekoma waits him out with a practiced patience. Finally, Joshua lifts a single finger and taps it to the report, to the line detailing the Player’s Entree Fee.

 _The ability to see the flow of destiny,_ it reads.

Joshua hums. The balance tips.

* * *

Sinbad doesn’t know how he got here.

He knows why he’s not at home, with Aladdin and Alibaba and Ja’far and the rest, but he doesn’t know why he’s _here_ , in the strange city with it’s unfamiliar noises and unfamiliar people.

The language sounds the same, but...

“Excuse me? Hello? If I may ask-”

The woman he tries to address walks right past him without a glance, just like every other pedestrian he's addressed so far. Sinbad brushes a hand over her arm and his fingers pass right through, just as they had all the others.

He sighs. This situation is frustrating, and he doesn't... he doesn't know what he should do about it. It's an odd feeling.

(Why _doesn't_ he know? He's always-)

“What are you _wearing?”_

The words, haughty and mocking, are undeniably directed towards him and have him turning with no little hope towards the speaker. A young boy, thin and pale-haired, cuts towards him through the crowd like the surrounding people don’t exist.

He’s the first person to look Sinbad in the eye since the man woke up in this alien place.

* * *

(“Let him play,” Joshua decides.

Hanekoma’s casual disinterest is a long-perfected affectation. “Sure thing, boss. But, you know this means that there’ll be an odd number of Players next Game, right?”

The Composer smirks. His form dims, shrinks, takes on familiar human features. “No. No, there won’t.”)

* * *

“Yoshiya Kiryu. Though my parents call me Joshua; I guess you can too, since we’re Partners and all.” 

There’s a sly amusement in Joshua’s otherwise insincere smile, and Sinbad finds himself returning the empty gesture automatically.

 _Arba,_ he thinks, _this would-be-child reminds me_ far _too much of Arba._

Odd, how that familiarity is nearly comforting.

“Alright then, Joshua. My name’s Sinbad.”

He doesn’t expect recognition, not in a foreign world, so he’s startled to receive it. “Like the sailor?” Joshua prods.

“I- beg your pardon?”

“‘Sinbad.’ A character from a rather prolific classic, with a few modern fictional rewrites and movie renditions to the name. You’ve never heard of the tale?” Joshua smirks into his fist, small but smug, and tilts his head coyly. “You must have come from pretty far away, then.”

“You could say that.” Sinbad chuckles, a touch uneasy. He... he can’t tell if Joshua is trustworthy, and that more than anything leaves him incredibly off-kilter, because he’s _always_ been able to tell.

But not now, it seems. Not anymore.

(Fighting for his world, for his people, _saving_ them—Sinbad knows that duty. He’d do it a thousand times over, if he had to.

But. _It’s been an awfully long time,_ he thinks with a grin, _since life felt quite this much like an adventure._ )

* * *

Fighting should be easy. Sinbad's been doing it for years.

Inexplicably, it is not.

The strange Magic Tools that Joshua identifies for him, taken from shops and fallen enemies, make the task doable. The pins require only a minuscule amount of magoi, after all, and using the Psychs is more an effort in not overloading them than anything else; their effects are more varied than any singular djinn equip, but far weaker and with harder limits. Joshua applauds his versatility, and mentions that most people only really manage one or two.

(This doesn't stop Sinbad from taking to the Lightning Psychs immediately.) 

But in actual combat, he falls short of his own expectations. He gets injured more frequently than he should, given his experience; he has a hard time judging when a blow will kill a Noise or stun it; he gets ambushed far more easily than he ever has been before.

He's always been able to trust his instincts. But they fail him repeatedly now.

"Welcome to the realm of normal people," Joshua comments dryly, once Sinbad has haltingly explained his own sudden inability to read the flow of battle to his partner. "I suppose you'll just have to learn to live with uncertainty like the rest of humanity."

It's not a comment helpfully meant. But it _does_ help, a little.

* * *

Later, after Josh has had his fun and Sinbad has learned a few valuable lessons -in being just as blind to the future as any other regular person, in _trusting your partner_ in spite of all doubts- the displaced king finds himself in an audience with the Composer.

Joshua barely looks human like this, made of light and harsh brushstrokes and music so subtle it might be woven into the fabric of reality itself. But Sinbad knows a thing or two about being a person under so much power that it warps your appearance. And Joshua’s voice, under all that authority, is exactly the same as the snotty brat that led him around Shibuya by the nose.

“So,” the being on the throne purrs. “I hear you’re looking for a way to traverse dimensions.”

**Author's Note:**

> Other things that definitely happened:
> 
> \- After explaining about the power of local fashion trends (which is a _weird_ aspect of this world, but it‘s not like Sinbad has never drawn power from his accessories before) Joshua takes over dressing both of them. At some point he gets Sin decked out in D+B gear, bc Sinbad’s bravery is absolutely through the roof and into the stratosphere, and Josh is a massive troll. (He also uses this to explain away wearing impractical high heels, restrictive but good-looking clothing, and why one watch is decent enough but another from the same store is absolute trash.)  
> \- Sinbad, ever the merchant at heart, haggles over the price of a cuppa joe from Hanekoma’s cafe. The audacity.  
> \- When Sin wins the Game, he has no body to come back to life to. Rukh may translate to Soul in Shibuya, (he never figures out that Shibuya isn't name of the country, btw) but Soul doesn’t make up a body quite the same way Rukh do—there are rules about this sort of thing. So Josh ends up promoting Sinbad to a Reaper before he drags the guy to his homeworld, just to give him the power to move through Frequencies and thus interact with the RG.  
> \- They absolutely almost run into Neku multiple times over the course of the week, and it is an _effort_ to steer Sinbad clear once the man catches on that Joshua is trying to avoid someone. (Josh thinks Sinbad is annoyingly intuitive. Sinbad thinks Joshua has far too many secrets, and that he really would like to unravel some of them.)  
> \- Sinbad’s friendliness level rises astronomically quickly with the female shopkeepers. (Possibly also with that one that's canon-gay.) On a related note, he flirts with a lady Reaper at some point and nearly gets his head taken off bc Josh was too busy laughing to help him not die.


End file.
